₦airaland Forum

Ok, so what about thi statement he reiterated recently:

"The grounds on which General Buhari is being promoted as the alternative choice are not only shaky, but pitifully naive. History matters. Records are not kept simply to assist the weakness of memory, but to operate as guides to the future. Of course, we know that human beings change. What the claims of personality change or transformation impose on us is a rigorous inspection of the evidence, not wishful speculation or behind-the-scenes assurances. Public offence, crimes against a polity, must be answered in the public space, not in caucuses of bargaining. In Buhari, we have been offered no evidence of the sheerest prospect of change. On the contrary, all evident suggests that this is one individual who remains convinced that this is one ex-ruler that the nation cannot call to order.

Buhari – need one remind anyone – was one of the generals who treated a Commission of Enquiry, the Oputa Panel, with unconcealed disdain. Like Babangida and Abdusalami, he refused to put in appearance even though complaints that were tabled against him involved a career of gross abuses of power and blatant assault on the fundamental human rights of the Nigerian citizenry."


http://goldmyne.tv/wole-soyinka-goes-all-out-on-this-one-the-nigerian-nation-against-general-buhari-by-wole-soyinka/

Also his very recent statement on the Abuja 'peace accord':

Identity Thieves And The 2015 Election Peace Accord - Wole Soyinka.

It was with high expectations that I have gone through the details of the Abuja peace accord recently agreed by the political party leaders, mandating decent and civilized campaign conduct among the contestants, their agents and supporters.
I was not disappointed. It is a positive step in the direction of democracy, for which I must commend the efforts of those seasoned interventionists, Emeka Anyaoku and Kofi Annan. Adhered to with good will and sincerity, it should ensure a wholesome space for future elections, and pre-empt further violence. It might even come close to what the democratic ideal should be, as canvassed by others, including Governor Fashola a few years ago – a people’s fiests!
From personal interest however, I was disappointed that the communiqué makes no reference to the violence done to members of the electorate whose identities are stolen, abused and debased during this exercise. It is rapidly becoming commonplace to encounter totally fictitious statements, even entire interviews published and attributed to unsuspecting authorship. This criminal proceeding has even involved the cloning of media mastheads to which non-existent interviews are then attached. To render it in local parlance, this is political 419, and of the most despicable brand.
While it would be unjust to place direct responsibility on the contestants, one must stress that they also have a moral responsibility to denounce these dirty tricksters in the strongest terms, even in their own interest. The resentment inspired in victims of such cowardly conduct cannot but impact on their own political image. The media must also protect itself by taking necessary measures against such unprincipled confusionists. It is the democratic right of every citizen to know exactly who is saying what on issues that affect their political choices.
Let me thus seize the occasion of the Abuja accord to state categorically that I have never made a statement endorsing any presidential or governorship contestant. All such attributions are fabrications by faceless, often self-appointed agents of deception, and should be publicly pilloried. Whenever I choose to declare support for a candidate - as is my electoral right - I shall ensure that I deploy a medium that places my authorship beyond dispute. Internet habituees, Social Network etc are urged to be less gullible, and avoid becoming cheap conduits for the deception industry!
I take a less serious – indeed, near carnivalesque - view of the opportunistic, and sometimes de-contextualized use of genuine quotes from statements I have made in the past – that is a different matter entirely. As a non-pensioned writer however, and thus dependent on the proceeds of intellectual property, such users should expect to hear from my Literary Agents.
I join General Abdulsalami and others in hoping that 2015 prove a live-and-learn election year, not a do-or-die!
Wole SOYINKA

MrMcJay:
Real African woman.

See better curves! Not like all these mgbeke girls looking like wall-geckos.

This sexy mama would make me play Premiership in the morning, Serie A in the afternoon and Championship at night. She ask for Recharge card, I buy am base station.

Make I get this one for house, if you see me for Nairaland, make I bend.

Chai...

I have gone through all the responses to my post. The story is true. The bus left Abuja at 7.15am on thursday 27th Dec. Aside the over 3hrs traffic jam from Asaba to Onitsha, questionable stops were the ones between Onitsha and Owerri due to supposed mechanical problems that were not physically attended to. The bus stopped at the Owerri terminus early hours of Friday 28th. Dear dailynews, the bus number and driver name is not difficult to ascertain - it was the 1st executive express (Abuja - PH) for that day.
To the posters who claim I lied or I'm fronting for a competitor - may you never experience a robbery attack. I'm not new to nairaland and a run through my profile will assure you that I'm not into making spurious allegations. Why didn't the ABC mgt at PH investigate and treat the complaints when they were made? I don't know. So what will happen to passengers losses? Gone with the wind if the PH ABC team is to be believed. But then, that is their error. This is one person ready and determined to seek for justice from behemoths who think that passengers are minions without rights. They will be hearing from my lawyers pretty soon especially as Dailynews rightly stated: it is a publicly quoted company that can sue and be sued. The essence of my post was to apprise people of the caveat especially at this season. I did recognise that some will take heed while others will scoff... It is the way of all human and therefore take no offence. Compliments of the season to you all and may 2013 be better for us.

ABC bus (Abuja to PH) left yesterday morning by 7.15am. After some questionable stops, it got to Owerri by midnight - usually it should have arrived PH much earlier. Despite pleas by passengers that the driver should wait till day break before proceeding, especially as the route was not safe at that time of day, the driver ignored security warnings and proceeded at 1.30am 28th Dec. Within an hour from Owerri, they were ambushed and robbed by armed robbers who requested the passengers to march into the bush leaving their luggage behind. After the robbery operation and the departure of the robbers, the bus continued to PH and finally arrived about 5am - almost 24hrs after leaving Abuja.
The passengers narrated their ordeal to the ABC management and the driver's obstinacy that got them into the problem. Rather, the passengers were informed that there was nothing ABC could do and the driver was exonerated.
If you are travelling by ABC, esp on the east west route, you are on your own o. The purported insurance cover is a joke. ABC is a rip off and when the chips are down, customer service is thrown out of the window.

I agree the North is poor. Yes, I agree the poverty has bred millions of destitutes, who have become instant and easy recruits for Boko Haram. But my question is: Who impoverished the North?

A caveat: I am an unabashed capitalist who believes that every citizen has a right to do good business and make profit. I salute hard work and do not disparage honest efforts. However, uncompassionate capitalism driven by pulleys of aristocracy breeds a brutal class order worthy of condemnation.

In my last article titled – “Elrufai’s amnesia: The day Boko Haram Wore Jeans”, I categorically stated that greed and the senseless chase for power by the Fulani aristocrats and political elites of the North are responsible for the extreme poverty of the North. I still and will always stand by that. My position did not go down well with my targets; they responded vituperatively.

The recent Mallam Sanusi’s statistics was intended to mislead us by ruffling the rudder of our common sense. See, Ekiti state has a 2012 budget 0f N88 billion; Kwara state, N90 billion; Cross River state, N144 billion; Anambra state, N82 billion; Enugu state, N74 billion. Now let’s look at the 2012 budgets recently passed into law by the four major Boko Haram occupied states – Kano state has a budget of N 210 billion; Borno state, 150 billion; Gombe, N94 billion; Yobe state, 80 billion.

A simple comparative analysis shows that Ekiti state has about the same revenue as Yobe and Gombe, but only 17 students passed WAEC and NECO in Gombe state last year, while Ekiti is known for its high literacy level. Gombe state has a bigger budget that Enugu and Anambra, why hasn’t MASSOB bombed anyone. Borno state has a budget twice that of Enugu state but the poverty and unemployment level in Borno state is more than thrice that of Enugu state. Borno has a bigger budget than a Niger Delta state- Cross River, while the leaders of that state over the last decade have transformed it into the Nation’s leading tourist destination; those of Borno have transformed it into a Somalia.

Kano state gets the highest statutory allocation from the FG, because on paper Kano is the most populated state in Nigeria, yet Kano has about 1.6 million destitute Almajiris. Kano has a budget almost thrice the budget of Enugu, twice the budget of Kwara, Anambra and Ekiti, but how come almost 90% of students in Kano fail WAEC? How come the poverty level in Kano is higher than all these states put together?

Why is the North so poor? From the figures above I have shown that Southern states with lesser budgets have shown better development performance than most North Eastern states with bigger statutory allocation and budgets.

Now, I need to tackle the sensitive question of revenue allocation that has infuriated the Mallam Lamido Sanusi and Mallam Elrufai and their likes. Niger Delta states get higher revenue allocation because they contribute virtually all the eggs in the national crate. That is expected. Albeit the 13% remains grossly inadequate, the CBN Governor has suggested that the ‘Boko boys’ are resisting the disparity.

I want to posit that the North through their aristocrats and ex-military rulers (except Gen. Mohammed Buhari) rake in more oil money (from the Niger Delta) individually than any Niger Delta state, and collectively more than twice the entire Niger Delta put together. In this disquisition, I have attempted to show that 80% of crude oil and gas produced by indigenous companies is controlled by the North. It is an area they have well conquered through General IBB, Abacha and Abdulsalami. However, the loots never get back home.

In this first part I will attempt to describe the very uneven nature of the distribution of the nation’s wealth among the Northern aristocratic families and their military generals who for decades looted Nigeria. They did so blatantly, and while Nigeria was weeping about oil windfall loot and others, Nigerians would wail if they know how much of the nation’s resources these folks allocated to themselves and their business fronts before they stepped aside.
Let us therefore begin.

To the state of origin of Boko Haram: Borno State. Enter Cavendish Petroleum, the operators of OML 110 – with good yielding OBE field. This oil block was awarded to Alhaji Mai Deribe – the Borno patriarch, who even in death will remain the richest man dead or alive in the history of Borno state- by General Sani Abacha on the 8th of July, 1996. OML 110 has a proven oil reserve in excess of 500 million barrels (More than the entire 300milliom barrels reserve of Sudan). As yet with the capacity to produce about 120,000 barrels of crude oil daily from its OBE 4 and OBE 5 wells. At optimal production levels, Cavendish nets circa N4billion monthly in crude oil sales (Using current oil price of $100pb). Cavendish Petroleum’s N4bn monthly net dwarfs the monthly statutory allocation of Borno which is about N3bn and its internally generated revenue staggers around N1billion. His mansion in Maiduguri has become a tourist attraction. A simple Google search will throw up different perspectives of Mai Deribe’s palatial home.

Enter Oriental Energy Resources Limited, a company owned by Alhaji Mohammed Indimi, a Fulani and close friend of General Ibrahim Babangida. Also worthy of note is that General IBB’s first son is married to Alhaji Mohammed Indimi’s daughter – Yakolo Indimi-Babangida, who also serves as a director in the company. Alhaji Indimi hails from Borno State.

Oriental Energy Resources Limited runs three oil blocks: OML 115, the Okwok field and the Ebok field. OML 115 and Okwo are OML PSC, while Ebok is an OML JV. All of them good yielding offshore oil blocks. OML 115 on its own is 228 sqKm. On OML115 Oriental Energy Resources Limited has 60 per cent while Equity Energy Resources AS. On Okwok, Addax has 40% and on the Ebok field, Oriental Energy Resources shares with none: its 100%. AMNI produces twice as much as Cavendish Petroleum.

I will then shift to the centre of the aristocratic hegemony and capitalism in the North – Kano. Here. Enter the Fulani Prince Nasiru Ado Bayero, Mallam (Prince) Sanusi Lamido Sanusi’s cousin. He is a Key shareholder and director in Seplat/Platform petroleum operators of the Asuokpu/Umutu Marginal Field with a capacity of 300,000 barrels monthly and A 30mmfcsd gas plant capable of feeding 100MT of LPG. The Ado Bayeros, Yar’Aduas and Atiku Abubakar are Nigerian holders of Intels. It is a private port that has grounded three Federal ports in the South. Intels is discussed later.
Enter South Atlantic Petroleum Limited (SAPETRO). South Atlantic Petroleum (SAPETRO) is a Nigerian Oil Exploration and Production Company that was created in 1995 by General T. Y. Danjuma. General Sani Abacha awarded the Oil Prospecting License (OPL) 246 to SAPETRO in February 1998.

The block covers a total area of 2,590km2 (1,000 sq. miles). SAPETRO partnered with Total Upstream Nigeria Ltd (TUPNI) and Brasoil Oil Services Company Nigeria Ltd (Petrobras) to start prospecting on OPL246. Akpo, a condensate field was discovered in April 2000 with the drilling of the first exploration well (Akpo 1) on the block. Other discoveries made on OPL 246 include the Egina Main, Egina South, Preowei and Kuro (Kuro was suspended as a dry gas/minor oil discovery).

In June 2006, General TY Danjuma divested part of its contractor rights and obligations to China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) for $1 billion (N160bn). Akpo exports about 230,000 barrels of condensate daily. Condensate export is not regulated by OPEC, so SAPETRO/TOTAL exports as much as possible each day. Egina exports about 75,000 barrels of oil daily.

Therefore, Akpo and Egina fields export just over 300,000 barrels of oil/condensate daily (three times what the country Ghana exports). SAPETRO (TY Danjuma) get 25% of this. Now, note I have not talked about the gas component – it’s about 2.5 trillion cubic feet. The money SAPETRO nets each month is more than the monthly statutory allocation of all the Niger states combined and also more than the oil revenue of Ghana. Do your math.

Enter AMNI (or is it AMIN?) International Petroleum Development Company. AMNI owns two oil blocks – OML 112 and OML 117. In the production sharing contract, AMNI gets 60% for owning the oil block and Total gets 40% for providing technical advice. OML 112 was awarded on the 12/02/1998 while OML 117 was awarded 06/08/1999 all by Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar. Operations started on both blocks 0n 26/02/2006. The licenses are due to expire 11/02/2018 and 05/08/2019 respectively. (Now you see why the next election is important?).

The Okoro and Setu fields in OML 112 are operated by Afren Energy, a company substantially controlled by Rilwanu Lukman. The Okoro and Setu oil fields have about 50 million barrels in reserve and currently produce/exports just a little below 20,000 barrels per day. The chairman of AMNI International Petroleum and Development Company is Alhaji (Colonel) Sani Bello a Fulani from Kontagora, Niger State. Lest I forget, Alhaji Bello’s son- Abu, is married to General Abdusalami Abubakar’s eldest daughter.

Enter Express Petroleum and Gas Limited floated by Alhaji Aminu Dantata, solely for the purpose of fronting for winning oil block(s) even though he and the company are in no way qualified for the award. General Abacha awarded him OML 108 on the 1st of November, 1995. CAMAC Houston, a company owned by Kase Lawal bought 2.5% of Express Petroleum’s 60% holdings. The other 40% on OML 108 is owned Sheba E&P Limited an IBB tributary company. SEPCOL operates the Ukpokiti offshore field in Shallow water Nigeria, which was acquired from ConocoPhillips in May 2004.

Enter Shebah Exploration And Production Limited (SEPCOL) . It is the operator of the Oil Mining License 108 offshore Nigeria. Head office is in Lagos, but ‘head quartered’ in Minna. Enter Consolidated Oil. Conoil Producing Limited is an integrated upstream oil and gas company. They are the operator of six blocks in the Niger Delta as well as 25% Equity holder in the Joint Development Zone (JDZ) Block 4. Corporate Head office is in Lagos, but its ‘Headquarters’ is in Minna, Niger State.

Conoil signed a technical operator agreement with Continental Oil and Gas Limited (CONOG) to provide 100% funding and technical service agreement to operate blocks OML 59 on a 40% (Conoil) / 60% (CONOG) basis. Conoil entered into a Production Sharing Contract with the NNPC by virtue of an agreement executed on 17th October 2008.

Conoil’s has overall potential hydrocarbon resources of over 1.0 Billion Barrels of Oil and 7.0 Trillion Cubic Feet of Gas. General Ibrahim Babangida awarded the first oil block to Conoil in 1991. The company produces about 100,000 barrels per day.

Enter Rilwanu Lukman, another Fulani multimillionaire with fronted controlling holdings in Afren, the operators of AMNI oil blocks and also with very key interest in the NNPC/Vitol trading deal, Vitol is a London based oil trading company. Vitol lifts 350,000 barrels of crude oil daily from Nigeria.

Enter Intels and the Yar’Adua , Ado Bayero family and Alhaji Abubakar Atiku. The Oil and Gas Free Zone and Oil Services Centres, as well as Support Bases, are operated from government-owned facilities, leased to Intels under long-term agreements. Intels runs a ‘private port’, a venture that has systematically killed the Calabar, Warri and Port Harcourt ports. There are over one hundred major companies operating at the Intel facility in Port Harcourt. The company makes more money in profit than the government of Rivers, Bayelsa and Delta states put together. I shall give details and figures in the part two of this disquisition.

I do not need to write so much about NorthEast Petroleum registered as NorEast. NorthEast Petroleum Nigeria Limited is the holder of OPL215 license, covering an area 0f 2,564 square kilometres in water depths between 200 to 1600 metres. NorEast is the parent company of Rayflosh Petroleum Nigeria which got the 2005 bidding round and was awarded the blocks OPLs 276 & 283 closing thereupon a Joint Venture Agreement with Centrica Resources Nigeria Limited and CCC Oil and Gas.

Not surprising, NorthEast Petroleum is owned by another Fulani businessman from the North East, Alhaji Saleh Mohammed Jambo. The license was awarded to him by General Ibrahim Badamosi Babangida in 1991 and then renewed in 2004. So far $50Million has been spent on the very promising Okpoi-1 and Egere -1 exploratory well.

We will table other North Eastern billionaires who make more money than their states of origin from Niger Delta oil blocks. With all these oil blocks owned by ‘North- Easterners’ in the Niger Delta, it should be clear to Elrufai and Sanusi who really benefits from the Niger Delta Amnesty Programme.

Sadly, the National Bureau of Statistics Poverty Profile Report just released shows the North East as the poorest region in the nation with 69.1 and 76.3 as absolute and relative poverty level respectively, while the South-West had the lowest poverty profile with 49.8 as absolute poverty level and 59.1 relative poverty level.

With these figures from the National Bureau of Statistics, I rest my case.

The rich man’s wealth is his strong city: the destruction of the poor is their poverty. Let us reason together.

http://africanheraldexpress.com/blog7/2012/03/14/the-politics-of-oil-blocks-and-the-northern-elites/

Dana Air has resumed flight operations despite the tragedy of yesterday. One would have expected that all their flights would have been grounded for comprehensive checks, but no. Money is more important than peoples' safety.Last sunday's tragedy is just another statistic in the annals of our aviation history.
We should not allow this. This is one crash too many. Callous business people cannot be allowed to have their cake and eat the same, literally speaking.People are still mourning a national tragedy and the first thing in the mind of the Dana management is MONEY.
But they forget one thing. People. They derive their income from the same people they choose to callously ignore, and have thereby drawn the battle line. Okay. So folks, let's take up the gauntlet. Sound the trumpets in all the villages and hamlets; reach to the cities; post in the townships; Inform your kith and kin; Amend your travel policy; tweet and retweet and announce the battle cry: BOYCOTT DANA AIR!
Families and friends have been so cruelly murdered. Yes, by the callous preference of money over people safety. And they think it is business as usual. WRONG.
Let's make an example of them as a warning to others who believe they can trample on the people. THAT TIME HAS GONE. THIS IS A NEW GENERATION OF PEOPLE. A NEW THINKING. A NEW ERA. We refuse to continue with the ways of old. So arise o compatriots:

BOYCOTT DANA AIR!

http://thestreetjournal.org/2012/06/the-real-reasons-behind-the-dana-air-crash/

. How Staff Were Forced To Fly The Plane Despite Complaints
. The Plane’s Catalogue Of Faults

Inside sources have revealed that the Dana Airline crash that killed over 150 people and rendered many homeless in Lagos could have been avoided if the airline’s management had listened to its staff.
Reports monitored on Channel’s TV on Monday morning indicated that the management was informed that the plane developed a fault shortly after it left Lagos and stopped over in Calabar. The Dana Air staff who spoke revealed that instead of sending the aircraft back to Lagos for repairs, the owners decided that it should go ahead to Abuja to pick passengers. The lady also stated that in the recent past, the plane had a number of problems with its hydraulics. The official said “the plane has being giving faults for a very long time. There was a case when it was on ground in Uyo for over six hours, because of delayed flight, it had a bolt. And then in Abuja it happened a few days ago, then some people went with the aircraft but they could not come back, because it had a fault there and it couldn’t leave Abuja.”
Speaking further, the official said “yesterday, it (the aircraft) was not supposed to leave Lagos at all, but it left and then got to Calabar, gave fault and it was fixed and then they took it to Abuja, when they should have returned to Lagos but because they didn’t want to part with the little money they will make, they took it to Abuja, loaded full passengers, and then it couldn’t get to Lagos. It has being having faults over time, continuously, hydraulics or one thing or the other. That aircraft kept having problems and they were not ready to park it” she stated.
Street Journal has also found out that the aircraft was faulty and the faults it gave made the original owners sell it. The plane was sold to Dana Airlines in February, 2009 by Alaska Airlines.
Checks from the Aviation Safety Network revealed that that particular plane, an MD-83 was manufactured in 1983 and it had its maiden flight on December 17, 1984. Alaska Airline bought the plane on the 13th November 1990 and it had the registration number N944AS.
It was found out that the plane had its first fault on November 4, 2002 when it had to undergo emergency diversion due to smoke and electrical smell in the cabin area, which engineers said was because light ballast had over heated.
The plane’s cabin area developed another fault on August 20, 2006, and it had to be evacuated after landing in Long Beach, California due to a chaffed wire bundle that discharged and produced smoke in the cabin area.
Street Journal gathered that Alaska Airline had the aeroplane parked in Victorville after the August 20, 2006 incident and it was in that state until maintenance was carried out on it in Miami on September 11, 2008 before its eventual sale in February 2009 after which it was registered as 5N-RAM.
The first issue the plane had in Nigeria was on April 19, 2010 when it had an emergency landing following loss of engine power after bird strike on take off in Lagos.
Meanwhile, in February 18, 2012, Street Journal published a story titled “America’s Damning Report on The Rot In Nigeria’s Aviation Sector”, the story was a sequel to a report on Nigeria’s aviation industry by an American agency. It reads “A few days ago, Street Journal reported on the substandard services in Nigeria’s aviation sector which have forced numerous travellers to complain about several airlines. At times flights are delayed for hours and on several occasions, passengers’ have had to cope with another stress as their luggage are sometimes forgotten at the point of departure by airlines. And to cap up the insult, neither apologies nor explanations are offered by the airlines for such developments.
Though the Nigerian aviation authorities have not released full reports of the three air disasters that occurred between 2005 and 2006, Street Journal got a copy of the reports on the crashes which were obtained by the American agency, AP. The revelations in the reports were damning and they went a long way to expose the rot within Nigeria’s aviation sector.
For instance, the report made it clear that before Lambert Imasuen, the pilot of the Bellview plane that crashed in 2005 was engaged by the aviation company, he had not flown any aircraft for 14 years. He worked at a popular dairy company in Ibadan and he only got to Bellview after he quit the dairy company. It was also discovered that during the 14-year break from flying, Imasuen was shot in the head by armed robbers, yet he was allowed to work as a pilot.
It was also discovered that safety regulations in aviation circles are rather loose.
The American Federal Aviation Administration requested the documents about the crashes through a Freedom of Information Act.
A report on the Oct. 22, 2005 crash of a Bellview Airlines flight that killed 177 people showed that the plane nose-dived into the ground at high speed. Investigators reportedly found only human remains that were “nothing bigger than toes and fingers,” the report read.
The summary of the report also stated that the plane’s captain, a 49-year-old former pilot, had been hired by Bellview after he had been working at a dairy for about 14 years. The pilot also had been “shot in the head during a robbery attempt” while he worked at the dairy. Surprisingly, “medical records do not contain any medical or hospitalization history of the event”. Though it was also stated in the report that follow up investigations would be carried out on the issue, there was no evidence that it was done.
At the Bellview crash site, deep in rural Nigeria, villagers looted the few pieces of what remained from the plane, likely including its “black box” recorders, according to an investigation summary.
The Dec. 10, 2005 crash of a Sosoliso Airlines flight full of schoolchildren from Abuja to Port Harcourt, which killed 107 people, appears to have involved both pilot error and weather.
The pilot was “reportedly racing a thunderstorm” nearing the airport, an FAA memo reads. The inclement weather also forced the pilot to make an instrument landing — meaning that visibility had been reduced to the point the pilot needed to rely on instruments to make his landing, the report read.
The plane crash landed on the grass alongside the runway, broke apart and caught fire.
The third major crash — an Oct. 29, 2006 ADC flight from Abuja to Sokoto — killed 96 people, including the top spiritual leader for the nation’s Muslims. The plane crashed 76 seconds after going airborne.
It was stated in the report that just before the crash, alarms began sounding in the cockpit and the pilots’ incorrect actions stalled the plane.
Though Nigerian aviation officials have claimed that air travel is much safer in the country, Nigerians in some places are still sceptical. Travellers alighted from an aircraft at the Ibadan airport sometime ago fanning themselves with almost everything they could lay their hands on; the air conditioning unit in the aircraft malfunctioned mid-air.
There have also been reports that the communication equipment on most aircrafts flying the local routes sometimes fail with weather situations.
The issue of graft too cannot be ruled out especially with the kinds of irregularities and substandard services that are allowed to pass.”

NTA 9pm news - what was found were not grenades but teargas canisters and some bullets. Let's tune in for further developments instead of wild allegations

Tuesday, February 7th, 2012
The News Nigeria logo


Wole Soyinka: Next Phase Of Boko Haram Terrorism
Published on February 6, 2012 by TheNEWS · 3 Comments

To what will you attribute Boko Haram’s terrorism?

Let me begin by reminding everyone that Boko Haram has a very long history, whether you describe Boko Haram as an army of the discontent, or even as some people grotesquely try to suggest, “revolutionaries,” or you describe them as, legitimately, this time, as marginalised or feeling marginalised. When I say that the phenomenon has a very long history, I am talking about a movement that relies on religion as a fuel for their operation, as a fuel for mobilisation, as the impetus, an augmentation of any other legitimate or illegitimate grievance that they might have against society. Because of that fuel, that irrational, very combustible fuel of religion of a particular strain, of a particular irredentist strain; because of the nature of that religious adherence, which involves the very lethal dimension of brain-washing from childhood, all a man needs to be told is that this is a religious cause. All they need to be told is that this is an enemy of religion and they are ready to kill. No matter the motivations, no mater the extra-motivations of those who send them out, they need only one motivation: that they are fighting the cause of that religion.

• Prof. Wole Soyinka

People wonder, sometimes, if they are fighting the cause of religion, why are they also killing fellow religionists? It is very important for us to understand that they have a very narrow view of even their faith. Anyone outside that narrow confine, narrow definition (in this case, we are talking about Islam), is already an infidel, an unbeliever, a hypocrite, an enemy of God (they use all these multifarious descriptions) and therefore is fit for elimination. If they believe that this environment contains any non-believer in their very narrow strain of Islam, that person or that very area is due for sanitation. And if there are those who also believe, who are confined within the very narrow limit of their arbitrary religion, any chance that there are such people, they consider them matyrs, who will be received in the bosom of Allah, with double credits as having been killed accidentally.

What I am saying is not any theorising; it is not any speculation. Examine this particular strain of Islam from Afghanistan, through Iran to Somalia to Mauritania. We are speaking in fact of a deviant arm of Islam, whose first line of enemies, in fact, are those who I call the orthodox Muslims with whom we move, interact, inter-marry, professional colleagues and so on. They don’t consider them true Muslims.

So the seeming paradox is explained in that. And this mind is bred right from infancy. We are talking about the madrasas, we are talking about the almajiris. They have only one line of command: their Mullah. If the Mullah says go, they go; come, they come; kill, they kill; beg, they beg. They don’t believe in leaving their narrow religion, which teaches them that they have to be catered for either by their immediate superior as an authority or by the community or sometimes an extension of that by the town. When they go out to beg, they believe that this mission of begging is divinely ordered and it is the responsibility of the person from whom they are begging to give them alms.

They sit before their Mullah or their Emir or their chief or whatever and memorise the Qu’ran. Their entire circumscription or mental formation is to be able to recite the Qu’ran from the beginning to the end. Outside of that, there is no educational horizon. So, I want us to distinguish very carefully. If you don’t distinguish, if you don’t narrow these things down to the specifics, we are likely to be misunderstood, as people like me have been misunderstood, because I have been against fundamentalism all my life, of any religion, whether it’s Christianity, Orisha worship, Buddhism, Hinduism or whatever. Any kind of extreme in faith that makes you feel that you are divinely authorised to be the executioner of your deity or that there is only one view of the world, or that only one view exists, for me, is pernicious and it is anti-human. That is why I am making this preliminary explanation.

The second elaboration I want to make is that I have never liked the expression, “the core North”. We are talking about North because the North is very much identified with Islam. And for one reason, there is no core South. I don’t know about the core East, I don’t know about the core West. So why that expression? For me it is too general, too loose and it confuses the dramatis personae of our political life.

I, however, identify hard-core northerners, as in hard core pornography. There exist hardcore northerners. They may be in the minority, but they believe that they are divinely endowed to run any society.

They are hardcore Northerners, whether you are talking about Sheikh Gumi and others. For a character like Sheikh Gumi, politics fuses with religion. A man who said Christianity is nothing, who said a Christian would rule this nation over his dead body. So, we have hardcore northerners, hardcore northern Islamists like the late Sheik Gumi. Among those that I describe as the hardcore northerners, (note I didn’t say Islamists), are people like Sani Ahmed Yerima, the former Zamfara State governor, who is now a legislator. There are hardcore northern Islamists. Why do I use Yerima? Because in him, you also encounter the fusion of a credo in Northernism and at the same time in Islamism. So you can see somebody like him as an opportunist. And I say this, you know, because he himself admitted to some of our people in NALICON during the immediate post-Abacha era, when he was asked why he decided to turn Zamfara into a theocratic state in a secular dispensation. He said, and I dare him to deny it, that it was the only weapon he had to snatch power. He said the PDP machinery was so strong that he needed something which would appeal to raw emotions, to mobilise and get the governorship.

If, periodically, I refer to this individual, it is because he represents to me, the opportunistic face of Islamism. And, of course, he had to deliver after he became governor. He is not the only one. I distinguish between him and Gumi because Gumi never sought political power. He was just a raw believer in raw Northernism and Islam. The two tributaries fuse in a personality like that.

In the case of Mr. Yerima and a number of others, Islam is just an instrument. I don’t consider them genuine Muslims. For them, however, they are willing to go the full length of Islam because it pays them politically. Having said that, I do not say for a moment that he is responsible for Boko Haram or that he has any hand in it. But I say that his school of thought and his school of opportunism is responsible for the birth of a movement like Boko Haram.

Now let’s get to the specifics. And I dare anybody to contradict what I am about to say. General Obasanjo came to power as a civilian ‘President’ on the platform of the Northern caucus. If you remember, there was a huge controversy: Did he sign? Didn’t he sign? Did that one sign, didn’t this sign?

Before the presidency was, shall we say ‘conceded’ to him, it’s quite true, and he’ll be the last to deny. In fact, he admitted that he was even brought a paper to sign but he refused.

The first signs that the sponsors of Obasanjo got that they made a mistake was when he dismissed military officers, who had held political offices. That was the first time those who sponsored Obasanjo, who were hardcore northerners, felt they had got themselves into trouble because as it happened, those who were most affected were northerners. That was the first sign of trouble.

And they just didn’t take it and say ‘oh let it pass’ until later. They then opened a war office at that time. I’m talking of a physical office in which every single thing he said, every clipping, was stored. Ask Olusegun Obasanjo. I personally told him this. I said: ‘By the way, I hope you realise that the people who sponsored you have declared war on you; that they have opened an office on you, specifically an Obasanjo office!’ How do I know about this? If anybody denies this, I will come back to you and I will tell you how I knew about it. I am not ready to divulge. So, that is the first. The second phase was when Obasanjo proceeded and began privately to plan his re-election (that is the second term in office). At that time, what I called the hardcore northerners began to mobilise at what level yet, I cannot categorically say.

I don’t have the slightest interest in whether Obasanjo was right to seek a second term or not. I am not going to discuss whether it is right or wrong for anybody to try to impose a limitation, which is not backed by the constitution, on any individual candidate. I’m just telling this nation certain facts which no one can deny.

Obasanjo decided to have a second term, that is a southerner, not just an ex-military man, but a southerner. The language at the time was very overt. It was ‘we are just lending you the presidency, we will take it back at the end of your term.’ It was a feeling, a belief, which percolated through the various levels, various ranks of politicians and across all ages.

I remember one incident. I was invited by Fani-Kayode (Femi) and Akin Osuntokun to a meeting of a group they had. There was a very young man, very intelligent, at the meeting. A lot of young northerners gravitated towards me, by the way, and I interact with them. Even back in the Abacha days, some of them used to come and see me in Harvard University, where I relocated and taught. And each time I meet a generation that does not belong to the hardcore northerners, I am always delighted to exchange ideas with them till tomorrow. And this young man, I remember I met him. And I wanted him to join us. I sent his name to Fani-Kayode and I said this is the kind of man you people should interact with. These are very progressive people. It almost ended in a disaster because that young fellow, whom I discussed with, made a mistake by saying: ‘After all, I don’t know what you people are complaining about. We did concede after Abiola. We did concede the thing to you.’ Fani-Kayode wanted to take that man’s head off. He blew up, it was difficult for me to separate them. I say these things only to explain that, even among some of the young generation that one thought could be weaned away from such ideas, such notions exist. A lot of people there that day can check on the incident. And it’s only one of such incidents.

So, the next sense of betrayal was when Obasanjo got a second term. Some of them even said openly that they had been misled that the man they thought was going to hold the forte for them turned out to have an agenda of his own. So far, so bad. The next phase that can determine at which time, I won’t tell you, the hardcore northerners began to activate what I called secret army, when they began to send their people to training. They felt they had to fight to take back what they felt belonged to the North.

So I suspect that the breaking point was when Yar’Adua took ill and the question of succession began. ‘If Yar’Adua dies, you mean another southerner is going to get into that position?’ This now became a real nightmare. For this, hardcore northerners (it’s too long, let’s just use the word cabal, even though that word is misused, to narrow it down to make sure we are talking about individuals, not about a region).

They decided that something drastic had to be done. Around this time, they had begun to activate, they intensified the training, this set of foot soldiers, they began to make intensified contacts, alliances with international religion-based insurgents like al-Qaeda. And their soldiers began to go to Mauritania, Sudan and Somalia, particularly those who were categorically confirmed by the security services. They began to send them seriously for training. That is not the problem, al-Qaeda has always been interested in Nigeria, as in Kenya and Mauritania. Osama bin Laden listed, if you remember, it’s published, Nigeria among the nations to be Islamised.

And so, these people went for training, they came back lying low, waiting to be activated. Remember all these didn’t begin with the period I’m talking about. They have a long history of extremists. People tend to forget about Maitatsine; that was a different calibre altogether. So there is nothing new about what we are seeing. It is the intensification and the murderous dimension that this narrow Islamism is taking.

I am talking of accumulation of grievances of this narrow group. And this is why even some of their own fellow northerners were targets because these were considered malodorous among them and in any struggle of this kind historically, you find that the first stage is to clean out your rearguard, those whom you consider might stab you in the back–the rearguard traitors. You wipe them out first. And that is why we are seeing the intensification of the antagonism towards certain progressive liberal northerners.

Matters became worse, of course, when Jonathan decided that in his own right, he was going to contest elections. That is when the last restraint vanished from the hardcore northerners. That is when they activated the extreme, murderous strain of religion. That is why they began to identify political enemies as religious enemies. What we are reaping today is largely a political problem. It’s true that in my article, precisely the last one, used in Newsweek, I emphasised the religious strain because it is true. I did not want to make statement of a political nature; I did not want to elaborate, but I said enough in that article where I used the expression: ‘those who lost out in the political stakes are the ones who are now intensifying, who are now mobilising, activating the religious fanatics in our midst.’ I just hinted as much. But now, we are reaching a place where we are talking in terms of fatalities, we are counting now in four figures. By the time you add together all the fatalities that have occurred in the last year and half, we are talking in terms of thousands now since the real militancy began.

But I think at that point, even before now, we should never even have gotten to this point. But now, we have reached the stage where there is going to be some frank talking among ourselves.

If you read the ‘manifesto’ of the Boko Haram, you will find that there is nothing you can actually hold on to unlike, say, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, MEND, which is categorical on the polluted environment. The oil companies have polluted the environment, all the wealth coming from there goes to develop the rest of the country, you killed our leaders, we turned them into martyrs, land is polluted, air is polluted. There are pulmonary and skin diseases as a result of oil spillage and flaring of gases. Fish ponds have been degraded. You can see what you can hold on to. You can agree or disagree with their methodologies, we are not talking about that now. The important thing is that when you read their table of content, of complaints, at least, it is not on an eerie level.

In this particular case, you can go to Youtube and all what Shekau says is that ‘democracy is haram’. We are going to Islamise’ and so on. What is he going to Islamise? You are talking nonsense because you are saying you were going to Islamise dead bodies. Let’s say there are non-Muslims in this country, a modest estimate, let’s say two million. I say very modest estimate, you know you cannot kill two million. So, what you do to Islamise is you do that over dead bodies and you can’t do that, not even if you say you are Rwanda.

It is because these hardcore Northerners are embarrassed to admit what really is behind this thing. They are embarrassed to admit it. And on the other side, they are inhibited, they don’t want to say it’s North versus South, it’s not even that. It’s a minority versus the rest. And I say it’s not even against the South. It’s a minority versus the entirety of the nation.

PDP is at the heart of the trouble, it’s within PDP they have been making this dirty bargain. “You rule for so long, it’s my turn.” It is not in the constitution. So it’s the PDP members, who really should go and sort out this problem among themselves. But the nation is the one paying the penalty. This is not comfortable because they can protect themselves. They are the ones that divided the country into two–the North and then, the South.

I think that the reason which you might say is on paper, in terms of political planning, are the six geo-political zones. This ‘two’ business, I don’t understand. But they are using this division of North versus South the same way as they are using religion. The issue is completely political. But with toxic element of religion infused into it, it gives them the leg to ally with international terrorist bodies based on religion. Those are only too happy to be of assistance.

It is the same way, as in the days of ideological bifurcation of the world, the Eastern bloc versus the Western bloc. All you had to do was to go the Eastern bloc and say I am a revolutionary, I’m a Maxist-Leninist, Troskyite, Maoist something, and they give you training right away and they embrace you, and are ready to send you even outside your own country to go prove your mettle there and come back.

And, of course, the capitalists would go to the former Nicaragua under Somoza and other nations and they also got their training. So, we are right inside an international programme. And a lot of people don’t understand; it’s not extraordinary, it’s only that we are hiding the truth under blocs, hoping that somehow it will fizzle away.

When we talk about a national conference, it’s because we realise there are serious polticial issues into which religion has also been cropped and that is a very lethal cocktail. But the basic thing is political. Religion is invoked. I am not surprised by the recent revelations being made in the papers such as ‘we have been on the payroll of this governor’. It may be true, it may be half true, it may be totally untrue.

But all these go back again to Maitatsine. In the Maitatsine days, governors courted the sponsorship of Maitatsine. I remember a former governor of Kano admitted that at the beginning, he used to go to Maitatsine, when elections came close, to get support. But he said: ‘I stopped doing that when I realised that it’s a very dangerous organisation.’

The politicians are so desperate; they are the ones who utilise religion. They are not alone. We saw Goodluck Jonathan kneeling before a Christian prelate for his blessing. The only difference is that I am not aware that Goodluck Jonathan has been sponsoring any militant fundamentalist Christians. People turn to religion. We shouldn’t be surprised at this; it’s the extent at which you want to go into religion that makes it a normal aberration, a contradiction in terms by the way or an acceptable kind of aberration. Whether one destabilises, whether one gives you psychological advantage over the followers of that particular religion, there is nothing we can do about that. But when we reach a point where the product of that alliance is destroying us, then I think it’s about time we all spoke up and let these people now admit what they have known, what they have always suspected, so as to assist the security people in determining where the criminal line exists and to take action.

Many people are worried that what Boko Haram is doing may lead to the dismemberment of the country, while some others are saying: “we are too interwoven to split”. On what side do you queue?

If Boko Haram succeeds in its stated agenda to make the country ungovernable, if Boko Haram succeeds in goading those areas that have victim citizens in the northern part of the country into reprisal actions on the nearest targets, not only will this cause a break-up, it will be very messy. That is the reason some of us have been issuing appeals to community leaders to make sure it doesn’t happen in their communities.

It isn’t the break-up as such. Other nations were broken up, but the way in which we will break up will be intensely irremediable, it will be extremely messy. I can reveal to you, for instance, what the third phase of Boko Haram is supposed to be.

The security people know it. I am making it known publicly because I am disappointed that they have not taken action on it. And that third phase is selected assassination of leaders from here. I happen to know for a fact that I am on the list. I am very close to the very top of the list. If you have contact within the security, go and check because I have this information confirmed within the Nigerian security services and from outside security quarters, which I will not name. At least the government security agencies have the responsibility to start protecting those individuals or at least to communicate to community leaders the existence of this threat so that they can take certain precautionary measures. Because if they succeed unfortunately in that particular project, things will be out of control. There are young people, who will not, may not be able to control their reactions.

The reason for this programme, which I know is very much their third phase, is that those pushing this agenda know very well that this could be the last straw that breaks the camel’s back. And they would rather this country broke up and possibly in an inferno, than continue to accept the loss, even the temporal loss of power in this country. For these people, government is the only business around. To the membership of this group that I’m talking about, government is the only business.

We are talking about an unproductive group, who all their lives, have been accustomed to living on the proceeds of power, even when they are not physically in charge. It is the only way of life that they know and so while destabilising the rest of the nation, they want to ensure that they carve out a certain region in which they can dominate, and which they can terrorise through an extreme form of the Sharia, so that they can continue consuming the revenue from that area, such as it is without any opposition. These people believe very much in the divine authority of religious governance.

They secure through terror, total destruction and, paradoxically, they are securing their enclave when they retreat, they have somewhere into which they retreat which is governed on the strictest law of the Sharia. That is their ultimate goal. If they cannot have the entire thing, that is the nation, then they can ally with similar theocratic states and their position is, whatever it is, they are not individual losers, they will be taken care of.

That is why I believe that the country is very much on the verge of disintegration, especially if Bokom Haram succeeds in its agenda, which I outlined. With complete sense of responsibility and with the accumulation of facts, some within the government know what I’m saying, they acknowledge it. Some within the security services, I hope, have reached that analytical truth. I hope so, but they are not acting as if they heard and it is very worrisome.

How do you assess President Goodluck Jonathan’s response to Boko Haram threat and even the President himself as a person?

I don’t believe that President Jonathan understands half of what I have been telling you about. I don’t think that he has a truthful appreciation of the circumstances. I think he is very much some kind of an optimist; he believes certain politicial largesse or panacea here and there will solve this enormous problem. I think he is counting too much on the fact that yes, indeed, there are strongly committed loyalists to his regime from the troubled parts of the country, and ideally that is enough.

He is underestimating the desperation of the forces of the group. I do not believe that he has been able to extract the lesson or lessons of Islamic struggle, that is internal struggle throughout the world. For instance, in Iraq, every year on the holiest day of a certain Islamic sect ( I am talking about the Shiites and the Sunnis) that one group goes and butchers the other, ambushes them, mows them down even on their way to pilgrimage. I don’t think he understands or appreciates the fact that even sanctuaries have become meaningless. Sanctuaries used to hold meanings in all religions. You don’t just assault your opponents when they have taken religious sanctuary. Nigeria is filled with a whole race of mimics.

If one person 419s, tomorrow, a thousand will. They will use exactly the same formula. If they see that this formula has worked in attracting one greedy fellow over there, the next time you will see thousands of people in cyber cafes, using exactly the same formula. If you analyse all the 419 letters, I don’t think you can get more than three models, with minor variations, and yet there are hundreds of thousands of these letters going out. I am sorry to say these are the kind of people who would say: ‘Oh, the Shiites killed just 40 people. Okay, to make ourselves heard, we’ll kill 400.’

That mimic syndrome of the worst kind that is taking place in others areas is somehow very prevalent here. A mistake in London is a style in Nigeria. That is our mentality, which has been carried over into the realm of religion.

And in talking about the almajiri, they are not the “unwashed” faces that you see on the streets now. Some of them who came through the madrasas you see on the streets have gone to universities and some of them have dropped out of universities because of genuine religious convictions. They look around and say: ‘we cannot be part of this sinful environment. This is not true Islam.’ But the more “enlightened” of them just go and carve out their own school of religious thoughts, gather adherents around them and preach and try and convert people. They don’t try and convert, putting a knife to the throat. No, they convert through the soul, through the invisible soul.

Others, however, have come to believe that what is happening in Afghanistan is what ought to be happening here. That they are not true religionists unless they are killing, unless they turn executioners on behalf of Allah. Who appointed them executioners? I don’t know.

But that is what they believe. Unless they are behaving in the most extreme fashion on behalf of their religions, they are not true religionists. And because they have been to universities and because they have travelled, they adopted the sophistication of other religious movements in terms of organisation, in terms of weaponry, in terms of arrogance to look down on those who do not believe in their particular religion, as less than human, as vermin, the extermination of which will make Allah very happy and will guarantee their entry into paradise.

This is the phenomenon we are confronting right now. And, unfortunately, it is not being said and said properly in the right places. The correct people are not being confronted with it. There are only those who understand it and who are willing to exploit it. And those are the hardcore northern Islamists that we are talking about.

There are people who suggest that the solution to this problem is to have a dialogue with Boko Haram. What you think?

I know the Movement for Unconditional Dialogue exists. That may have to do with guilt. In Obasanjo’s case, guilt is definitely involved because it was under his watch that theocratism entered this country in a structured way. And you also note that he cultivated some of these groups because of his own political agenda. So, he owes them, so to speak, in the sense of repayment of the debt. There are others who, for me, have wooly ideas, who believe that, who fastened on dialogue as a magical wand. You dialogue only with those who are willing to dialogue.

These people, as I said, have not articulated what they want to come and discuss at the conference table. You begin talking of dialogue when there is articulation.

They want the suspension of the constitution, they want the enthronement of Sharia…

Throughout the whole nation, and that is why they are bombing us to the table! Alright, those who want to have dialogue with them on those terms, please go and institute the dialogue. We instituted a dialogue without involvement of government in this nation, which was PRONACO. Obasanjo tried to stop it, he threatened us, he charged us for treason. In fact, if you remember, that was when I came into PRONACO. When he said he was going to arrest all those who were organising the conference, I said what? In this country under a democratic dispensation, a group of people cannot meet, and decide and review the constitution and then present their findings to the rest of the nation? And I joined. That was how I came into PRONACO.

To those who believe in dialogue, organise your dialogue. I am not stopping you and then come and give the rest of us what your findings are.

We are not stopping you, but please don’t tell me that somebody attempted to take my life yesterday and then I start begging him, please come to the table. I believe that one should not beg for existence. If the price of not coming to table is that you want to eliminate me, and you can do so, please do so. I am 77.

Please come to the debating table, but you will not persuade me simply because you have the capacity to blow me and my family. You can simply go ahead, blow us up if you think that is the way you can do your conversion. But you will not bomb me to sit with you at the table. Rather, that diminishes me as an individual.

How would you describe the last protests over the fuel price hike?

A huge awakening and I hope a huge revelation, not only for the present governors but for those who want to come. It is a heartwarming event. To mobilise the country in such numbers says a lot of the political enlightenment. I think even if the goal was not achieved immediately, and I use the word immediately because it does not mean the goal will not be eventually achieved, the bill of rights, the bill of claims, is there. It’s being distributed, including the things we went to discuss at the town hall meeting.

For once, such a bill of demand has to be taken seriously because they know that the people have the will and the power and the means of mobilising in support of that. It includes things like what legislators should be earning, removal of tax here and there, transparent investigation of the real killers of society, economic muderers of society, abolition of such offices as first lady, which is not in the constitution.

I know that the movement, which we saw, will be pushing that bill of demands at every opportunity. And if government is dragging its feet on those issues, if it is showing unwillingness, it is trying to be deceitful, doing cosmetic things, I know the people will come out again.

You once said the presidential system of government is too expensive. Why do you consider the other alternative, which is the Westminster model, better, given that it has its own shortcomings?

The human factor is always there. What you do is block the avenues for corruption. And the presidential system is the most corruptible. Even in the United States, from where we copied it, you find that there are so many bye-laws, regulations, even lobbies. But there are rules and laws that have mapped out how far you can lobby, not to declare certain things, areas of interest, and so on. We don’t even have such controls here to start with.

The parliarmentary system, to me has less avenues for corruption. But above all, I think that in this country, what is wrong with having a part-time legislature? Look at the amount of work they do; calculate the man-hours involved in their sitting and tell me why they have to have full time engagement. And all the scandalous allowances.

Do you believe the ongoing probe of the oil sector can yield anything meaningful, given that we have a history of probes that have turned up nothing positive?

Let me first of all say that among the problems, among those who at least delight in Boko Haram and the destabilisation of the nation, are those who have criminal cases to answer and they are across the land. They are not just those we are speaking of now. And so, every kind of attack should be very carefully examined because there are those who jump on the bandwagon to assist in the total disintegration of the nation.

Many people for instance don’t know (let me go back to the opportunistic categorisation) that one of the very first files taken by the EFCC to Obasanjo when he was there, was the file of Ahmed Yerima, governor of Zamfara State. If you don’t believe me, go and check with Nuhu Ribadu. One of the very first files, with prima facie case for serious investigation and prosecution, was the case of Ahmed Yerima.

Some of these people, South, North, East, mouthing dialogue this and that don’t even want dialogue. And they also have very serious criminal cases. I mentioned that in my article in Newsweek.

So, we are waiting to see whether something positive will happen with all the probe going on. The civil society is also waiting on the direction of those probe to see if they are serious. I mean they have asked in that bill that I saw for life sentences for anyone found guilty of corruption. Let’s see how serious, how free these investigations will go.

One of the problems Nuhu Ribadu had, for instance, was that he found himself being circumscribed. I’m waiting to read his book, by the way, to see how much he is willing to tell of what happened during that period.

What do you make of the recent deployment of soldiers in Lagos?

It’s pernicious and it’s a huge blot on Jonathan’s administration that he found it necessary (in a democratic setting, with legitimate demonstrations going on, rallies going on, peaceful, well controlled) to send the military to Lagos. It’s something which should never have happened. I went there. Unfortunately, I couldn’t do the walk that I wanted to because I was being mobbed almost immediately. I got down from the car. I just asked some of the officers there: ‘What are you people doing here and when are you leaving?’

‘We are here to protect you, sir.’

I said: ‘Don’t tell me that; you know very well you are not here to protect me, I don’t need your protection.’

And I had to jump into the car because people were bringing out their cameras and so on. I didn’t really do what I wanted to do. It’s wrong, it’s setting the people against the military and it’s only in extreme cases that you infest a place with military presence.

There are people wondering, given the way Jonathan is going and the helplessness he has shown, if the military would not come back. And if the military should come back, won’t they be accepted?

We have had worse cases of civil unrest in other societies where the military did not come in. And so I will find it totally unacceptable, the incursion of the military. They are part of the problem, they sowed the large part of the problem. And so they cannot say they are coming to solve it. All we just want from the present administration is that Jonathan should widen and diversify his present catchment area of consultation. He should try and bring closer those who have no stake in the governance, who are not seeking advantage, those who are genuinely altruistic about the direction of this nation, those who are not seeking for preferment, not looking for contracts, not looking for jobs, not looking for anything whatsoever. He should try and diversify his area of consultation.

He desperately needs that. I believe that he is doing himself a lot of damage by restricting, I mean he should have more options; I believe he is having only one set of options, the kind of option that made him to antagonise a large section of the civil society by deploying soldiers where they were not needed, where there was that little justification for them. Somebody obviously said to him: ‘Oh you are weak, show that you are in charge, show that you are commander in chief, send the military there’ and he also bought it, I suspect. I don’t believe that it stemmed directly ftom him. It was part of the advice given him. In any case, the buck stops on his desk. He did it and he has to accept responsibility for it, and the penalty which civil society will exact from him. And on the penalty, I’m not talking about the immediate, I’m talking in terms of the kind of support they give to his government. He will come to appreciate that he committed a huge blunder.

He alienated a large section of this population because of that. To militarise any section of society unnecessarily and with the governor saying: ‘I didn’t invite you, please take your people away’; leaders of society saying: “please, take these people’ and then having the military lying and saying “we had this arrangement”. Which arrangement is that? You know where the armed robbers are, go and find them. They are not at Gani Fawehinmi Park.

What do you have to say about the ethnicisation of the protests/struggle?

Oh, what a disappointment, that was. That is also a result of the narrowness of advisory circle that he has. I was very disappointed, I want them to please go back to history, not even immediate past history, and see how civil society conducts itself when there is disagreement with governments at the centre. Let’s go back, under Obasanjo, under Yar’Adua, under Shagari, under Tafawa Balewa, let them go back and please not lose credibility, particularly that language “Our son, our son”. It disgusts me. Who is our son? Who is not our son? Who is our father? Who is not our father? I found that kind of language very depressing and I hope it is an aberration. I like to be able to meet those I still consider my comrades on that side of ethnicity to please, come back into the fold. You can disagree with the cause, there is nothing wrong with that. Even on a parochial level, you can disagree. If you believe, for instance, that the revenue that will come to you will become less, will be reduced, so you have the right to fight for that kind of revenue, but you don’t have to ethnicise it.

When we talk about allocation, derivation, we are not talking about one region alone. Lagos is involved in the same principle of derivation. We have been talking about VAT, we have been saying that it should be proportionate. Where VAT is derived should have a lion’s share of the proceeds. To generate consumption, you put certain infrastructure in place, you spend your revenue. Common justice dictates that in the states, there should be a derivation principle in proportion to what you actually contribute to that common purse. And so we are on the same side.

I don’t say this for any reason. Fashola is not my son, I didn’t know him until he became governor. We are saying this on behalf of human beings, who also actually occupy spaces, not their leadership. Let’s hear the last of “our son, our son”. I don’t want to hear it.

Can we have your take on the judgment (death sentence) on Hamza al-Mustapha and Shofolahan?

This moment of decision would have been arrived at much earlier, if al-Mustapha and his defence had not deployed delaying tactics, including grandstanding efforts to rubbish his judicial process. The delaying tactics were based on the expectation that government would change hands in Lagos State. I know for a fact that al-Mustapha had been assured that the trial would be discontinued with a change of government.

He gambled on this assurance and he lost. Pressure was indeed mounted on Lagos State government to release him. The discontinuance of the case against Mohammed Abacha was cited as guarantee – more of that in another place. Mustapha’s defiance, his confident arrogance, his insults to the process, were based on this assurance. I make no comment on the outcome, I merely remind the Nigerian people once again that political interference with the judiciary remains one of the main issues that must be tackled whenever (if ever) Nigerians take the courageous step to sit together and fashion a new set of constitutive protocols for their co-existence that protects the judiciary in an unassailable manner.

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In all these, can someone please post a link where El Rufai did call the folks fools

“The invitation to the Celestial Lodge of the Soul Personality of the irrefrangible and sui ge.neris Ikemba himself-Dim Odimegwu Ojukwu-brings again to focal hiceps and biceps the ephemerality of life. Beyond the state of lachrymoseism his celestial ascension has and would continue to righteously bestow, I do hope however that we take immutable cognition of the fact that the fundamental issues which Ikemba confronted has now even coagulated and ossified into gorgon medusa.”

Here for what?

The owner of a large factory decided to make a surprise visit and check up on his staff. Walking though the plant, he noticed a young man leaning lazily against a post.
"Just how much are you being paid a week?" said the owner angrily.
"Three hundred bucks," replied the young man.
Taking out a fold of bills from his wallet, the owner counted out $300, slapped the money into the boy's hands, and said, "Here's a week's pay — now get out and don't come back!"
Turning to one of the supervisors, he said "How long has that lazy bum been working here anyway?"
"He doesn't work here," said the supervisor. "He was just here to deliver a pizza!"

My quiet Saturday morning ended abruptly when my 12-year-old son, Billy, and one of his friends burst through the door.
"Hey dad," announced Billy, "have you met the new neighbors?"
"No."
"Come on, dad. You have to meet them!"
"Some other time. I'm busy."
"Dad, you have to meet them now!"
From the urgency in Billy's voice, I assumed the neighbors were waiting outside. I set aside my project and went to the front of the house. No one was there.
"Where are they?" I asked.
"Well, dad," he explained, "we haven't met them yet either, but our football is in their living room!"

Jane walked into a pharmacy, strolled over to the counter, and caught the pharmacist's attention.

"Can I please get some arsenic?" she asked.

"Arsenic? What do you want arsenic for?" asked the pharmacist.

"It's for my husband," she replied.

"Your husband?" exclaimed the pharmacist, "I hope you don't mean what I think you mean!"

She just nodded.

"Well, lady," he replied, "I'm an honest man. I can't sell you arsenic, I wouldn't if I could, and I don't know what made you think you could just stroll into a respectable store and expect me me to sell you arsenic.!"

She didn't say a word. She just reached into her purse, fished out a photograph, and handed it across the counter. It was a picture of her husband, in bed with the pharmacist's wife.

Slowly the pharmacist looks up, over the counter, and then straight at her. "Lady," he said, "why didn't you tell me you had a prescription?"

A famous speaker said: “The best years of my life were spent in the arms of a beautiful woman who wasn’t my wife!”
Audience was shocked. The speaker added: “that woman was my mother!” (Laughter and Applause)
A listener tried it at his home. He said loudly to his wife, “The greatest years of my life were spent in the arms of a very beautiful woman who was not my Wife!”
Standing there for 20 seconds trying to recall the second half of the joke, he finally said “…and I can’t remember who she was!”
He regained his consciousness in a hospital bed.

A young couple got married and went on vacation to a neighbouring country.

After 2 weeks they came back and finally put away all of the presents they received from friends and family.

Since the home was new, the process took some time.

The silver went into the closet, items were put on the walls for display and some of the more intimate apparel was put in the bedroom drawers.

A week later, they received in the mail two tickets for a very expensive entertainment park.

They were very excited and warmed by the gesture of the person who sent this. Inside the envelope, however, was only a small piece of paper with a single line: “Guess who sent them.”

The pair had much fun trying to identify the donor, but failed in the effort.

They went to the entertainment park, and had a wonderful time.

On their return home late at night, still trying to guess the identity of the unknown host, they found the house stripped of every article of value.

And on the bare table in the dining-room was a piece of paper on which was written in the same hand as the enclosure with the tickets: “Now you know!”

1. Law of Mechanical Repair – After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you’ll have to pee.
2. Law of Gravity – Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner.

3. Law of Probability -The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act
4. Law of Random Numbers – If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal and someone always answers.
5. Law of the Alibi – If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire.
6. Variation Law – If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now (works every time).
7. Law of the Bath – When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone rings.
8. Law of Close Encounters -The probability of meeting someone you know increases dramatically when you are with someone you don’t want to be seen with.
9. Law of the Result – When you try to prove to someone that a machine won’t work, it will.
10. Law of bio mechanics - The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.
11, Law of the Theater and Hockey Arena – At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle, always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer, or the toilet and who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over. The folks in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies, and stay to the bitter end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.
12. The Coffee Law – As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.
13. Murphy’s Law of Lockers – If there are only two people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.
14. Law of Physical Surfaces – The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor, are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.
15. Law of Logical Argument – Anything is possible if you don’t know what you are talking about.
16. Brown’s Law of Physical Appearance - If the clothes fit, they’re ugly.
17. Oliver’s Law of Public Speaking – A closed mouth gathers no feet.
18. Wilson’s Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy - As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it.
19. Doctors’ Law - If you don’t feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there you’ll feel better. But don’t make an appointment, and you’ll stay sick.

Tom was arrested for selling home-stilled whiskey. His lawyer put him on the stand and asked the jurors to look carefully at his client.
"Now, Ladies and Gentleman of the jury," concluded the lawyer, "you've looked carefully at the defendant. Can you sit there in the jury and honestly believe that if my client had ANY whiskey he would sell it?"
He was acquitted.

Dear El Guapo,
The courtesy to acknowledge that you reproduced my 2006 joke here would have been gracious of you ol chap. See the link below

https://www.nairaland.com/nigeria/topic-13698.0.html

Anyway, nothing spoil.

Mrs. O'Donovan was walking down O'Connell Street in Dublin, and coming in the opposite direction was Father O'Rafferty.
"Hello," said the Father, "and how is Mrs. O'Donovan? Didn't I marry you two years ago?"
She replied, "That you did father."
The priest asked, "And are there any little ones yet?"
"No, not yet Father," said she.
"Well, now, I'm going to Rome next week, and I'll light a candle for you."
"Thank you, Father." And away she went.
A few years later he ran into Mrs. O'Donovan's husband. "Well, now, Mr. O'Donovan," said the Father, "how are you?"
"Oh, very well," said he.
"And tell me," He said, "have the O'Donovans had any wee ones yet?"
"Oh yes, Father. Three sets of twins, and four singles -- ten in all."
"Now, isn't that wonderful," he said "And how is your lovely wife?"
"Oh," he said, "she's gone to Rome, to blow out that candle!"

A man is driving down a country road when he spots a farmer standing in the middle of a huge field of grass. He pulls the car over to the side of the road and notices that the farmer is just standing there, doing nothing, looking at nothing.
The man gets out of the car, walks all the way out to the farmer and asks him, "Ah excuse me mister, but what are you doing"?
The farmer replies, "I'm trying to win a Nobel Prize."
"How"? asks the man, puzzled.
"Well, I heard they give the Nobel Prize to people who are out standing in their field."

This disclosure came on a day sources close to the PCA, hinted that he has concluded plans to challenge the NJC verdict in court.

Which court? im own don finish. Make im jus beg the oga judge and matter close. Monkey no dey chop butter.

Courrrrrrrrrrrrrrtttt!!

ODAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSS!

AHOY C-DAWGS,
D Cs ARE RUFF, BUT SAYLE WE MUST. LUBAS CANNOT COMPREHEND.
HALF A WORD IS ENUFF.
FINGAS 4 FINGAS

DA BONZ LIVE!!

How are you feeling?
Farmer Brown decided his injuries from the accident were serious enough to take the trucking company responsible for the accident to court. In court, the trucking company's fancy lawyer was questioning Farmer Brown. "Didn't you say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine'"? asked the lawyer.
Farmer Brown responded, "Well, I'll tell you what happened. I had just loaded my favorite mule Bessie into the, "
"I didn't ask for any details," the lawyer interrupted, "just answer the question. Did you not say, at the scene of the accident, 'I'm fine'!"
Farmer Brown said, "Well, I had just gotten Bessie into the trailer and I was driving down the road, "
The lawyer interrupted again and said, "Judge, I am trying to establish the fact that, at the scene of the accident, this man told the Highway Patrolman that he was just fine. Now several weeks after the accident he is trying to sue my client. I believe he is a fraud. Please tell him to simply answer the question."
By this time the Judge was fairly interested in Farmer Brown's answer and said to the lawyer, "I'd like to hear what he has to say about his favorite mule Bessie."
Brown thanked the Judge and proceeded, "Well, as I was saying, I had just loaded Bessie, my favorite mule, into the trailer and was driving her down the highway when this huge semi-truck and trailer ran the stop sign and smacked my truck right in the side."
He continued, "I was thrown into one ditch and Bessie was thrown into the other. I was hurting real bad and didn't want to move. However, I could hear ole Bessie moaning and groaning. I knew she was in terrible shape just by her groans."
"Shortly after the accident a highway patrolman came on the scene. He could hear Bessie moaning and groaning, so he went over to her. After he looked at her, he took out his gun and shot her between the eyes. Then the patrolman came across the road with his gun in his hand and looked at me."
Finally, Farmer Brown came to the end of the story. "The patrolman looked at me and said, 'Your mule was in such bad shape, I had to shoot her. How are YOU feeling'"?

Dear God,
1. Thank you for the baby brother, but what I prayed for was a puppy – Joyce
2. If you give me genie lamp like Alladin, I will give you anything you want except my money or my chess set – Raphael
3. Maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each other so much if they had their own rooms. It works with my own brother – Larry
4. Instead of letting people die and having to create new ones, why don’t you just keep the ones you’ve got now? – Jane
5. If you let the dinasor not extinct, we would not have a country. You did the right thing – Jonathan
6. I went to this wedding and they kissed right in church, is that okay? – Neil
7. I think the stapler is one of your greatest invention – Ruth M
8. I think about you sometimes even when I’m not praying – Elliot
9. I am Amearican. What are you? – Robert
10. I bet it is very hard for you to love all of everybody in the whole world. There are only 4 people in our family and I can never do it - Nan
11. We read Thos. Edison made light, but in Sun school they said you did it. So I bet, he stoled your idea. Sincerely – Donna
12. Please send Dennis Clarke to a different camp this year - Peter

The little boy greeted his grandmother with a hug and said, "I'm so happy to see you grandma. Now maybe daddy will do the trick he has been promising us."

The grandmother was curious. "What trick is that my dear," she asked.

The little boy replied, "I heard daddy tell mommy that he would climb the walls if you came to visit us again."

At work, Tom and Jack were chatting:

Tom: Jack, I’ve been attending evening classes for 8 months now and I have a test next month.

Jack: oh!

Tom: For example, do you know who is Thomas Edison?

Jack: No

Tom: He’s the inventor of the light bulb; if you take evening classes you would know this.

The next day, the same discussion took place:

Tom: Do you know who Gandhi is?

Jack: No

Tom: He’s the key architect of Indian Independence, if you take evening courses, you would know this.

The next day, once again:

Tom: And do you know who J.K Rowling is?

Jack: No

Tom: She’s the author of Harry Potter series, if you take evening courses, you would know this.

This time, Jack got irritated and said: And you, do you know who is Kevin Johnny?

Tom: No

Jack: He’s the guy roaming with your wife everyday!! If you stop evening courses, you would know.

1. Grasp cat firmly in your arms. Cradle its head on your elbow, just as if you were giving baby a bottle. Coo confidently, "Thats a nice kitty."
Drop pill into its mouth.
2. Retrieve cat from top of lamp, and pill from under sofa.
3. Follow same procedure as in 1, but hold cat's front paws down with left hand and back paws down with elbow of right arm. Poke pill into its mouth with right forefinger.
4. Retrieve cat from under bed. Get new pill from bottle. (Resist impulse to get new cat.)
5. Again proceed as in 1, except when you have cat firmly cradled in bottle-feeding position, sit down on edge of chair, fold your torso over cat, bring your right hand over your left elbow, open cat's mouth by lifting the upper jaw and pop the pill in - quickly. Since your head is down by your knees, you won't be able to see what you're doing. That's just as well.
6. Leave cat hanging on drapes. Leave pill in your hair.
7. If you're a woman, have a good cry. If you're a man, have a good cry.
8. Now pull yourself together. Who's the boss here anyway? Retrieve cat and pill. Assuming position 1, say sternly, "Who's the boss here, anyway?" Open cat's mouth, take pill and, Oooops!
9. This isn't working, is it? Collapse and think. Aha! Those flashing claws are causing the chaos.
10. Crawl to linen closet. Drag back large beach towel. Spread towel on floor.
11. Retrieve cat from kitchen counter and pill from potted plant.
12. Spread cat on towel near one end with its head over long edge.
13. Flatten cat's front and back legs over its stomach. (Resist impulse to flatten cat.)
14. Roll cat in towel. Work fast; time and tabbies wait for no man-or woman.
15. Resume position 1. Rotate your left hand to cat's head. Press its mouth at the jaw hinges like opening the petals of a snapdragon.
16. Drop pill into cat's mouth and poke gently. Voila! It's done.
17. Vacuum up loose fur (cat's). Apply bandages to wounds (yours).
18. Take two aspirins and lie down.

Husband: Do you know the meaning of WIFE?

It means, Without Information, Fighting Everytime!

Wife: No darling, it means,

With Idiot For Ever

————————-

Husband: Today is Sunday & I have to enjoy it. So I bought 3 movie tickets.

Wife: Why Three? Husband: For you and your parents

———————–

Why do married men gain weight while bachelors do not?

Bachelors go to the fridge see nothing they want and go to bed.

Married men go to bed see nothing they want and go to the fridge

Lost on a rainy night, a nun stumbles across a monastery and requests shelter there. Fortunately, she's just in time for dinner and was treated to the best fish and chips she's ever had.
After dinner, she goes into the kitchen to thank the chefs.
She is met by two brothers, "Hello, I'm Brother Michael and this is Brother Charles."
"I'm very pleased to meet you. I just wanted to thank you for a wonderful dinner. The fish and chips were the best I've ever tasted. Out of curiosity, who cooked what"?
Brother Charles replied, "Well, I'm the fish friar."
She turns to the other brother and says, "Then you must be"?
"Yes, I'm the chip monk."

A redneck girl was dating a fellow in Pennsylvania named Clarence.
They got into a huge fight and she told her two brothers, Billy Bob and Billy Jim, about it.
They jumped into their pickup truck and headed to Pennsylvania to settle the score with Clarence.
They reached the state line and after passing under an overpass, Billy Bob made a quick U-turn and headed back toward home.
Billy Jim asked why he had turned around.
Billy Bob replied, "I ain't messing around with that dude. Did you see that sign back there? 'Clearance 14 feet 8 inches.'"